Not every story makes for a great basis of Role-Playing Game. Some stories are surprisingly good. A Bug’s Life might not have as much combat as your average D&D campaign, but not closer: A plucky hero journeys through unknown lands to gain the aid of a bunch of performers to help save a group of farmers from the Big Bad Evil Guy and his army.
As soon as you imagine the circus troop as a bunch of bards – persuading and performing and sleight-of-handing their way around the villains, it suddenly makes a lot of sense. Hopper, the main villain in question, is superbly suited for the BBEG role.
Hopefully, this is boss number 2 for your first playthrough of Bloodborne. If not, I highly recommend seeking out the Cleric Beast first. It’s not just because he’s easier (whether a Souls boss is easy often depends on the player, but CB definitely feels more like a training boss). It’s also because a win before Father Gascoigne will give you a well-needed confidence boost.
Gascoigne is a tough boss this early into proceedings, and has turned a lot of players away from continuing the game. But with a bit of confidence, and advice from this clumsy, bumbling gamer, and you can win even if it doesn’t seem likely.
“Rocks fall, everybody dies” is a common trope in table top games, which the Games Master can use to express joking (or in some cases, very serious) disdain or disapproval of their player’s behaviour. When the game has gone off the rails, the party is threatened with death by sudden squishing.
[Spoilers] In Brave, however, ‘rock fall, villain dies’ is more apt.
In most TTRPGs, ending a story arc with a boss that’s just a big bear might not result in the most thrilling conclusion. But Mor’du is a very big bear. A big, scary, rage-filled, super strong bear. So there’s something we can work with.
If you’ve found this monster, it is either your very first Bloodborne boss, or you’ve found after meeting and/or beating Father Gascoigne. If it’s the latter, hopefully this encounter will be less stressful for you.
Gascoigne is the real test of whether you want to play this game. The Cleric Beast is (a little bit) easier to train your skills on.
As with most things in Bloodborne, this will not be easy, but the Cleric Beast is very manageable, and with a little bit of preparation and planning he can be beaten.
I’m one of those people who is very fond of Black Cauldron. Where most people find it too dark for Disney, to bleak and weird, I was very much on board.
Re-watching Black Cauldron for this blogpost, I found that I enjoyed the movie just as much as when I was young, but my thoughts on the main villain were altered greatly. I’d remember him as this all powerful tyrant that would be in contention for the topic TTRPG Disney villain, but he’s a little… wimpier than I remember.
That might not necessarily be a bad thing for your campaign though.
It has been a busy six months – moved house, second child was born, family highs and lows, work has been tough – and blogging needed to be put on hold. As did all of my gaming, D&D and video gaming, for a time.
Now that the dust has settled, I’m gaming again. I’ll soon hopefully be blogging about the two very different games I’ve started up: Snowrunner and Bloodborne. I plan to write an idiots guide to Bloodborne at some point, as my experience with it was similar to the one I had with Dark Souls (I never got gud, but I somehow made it through).
I’ll also be picking pack up with the Disney Villains in D&D series I was writing, hopefully next Wednesday. I also plan to do a bit more regarding my teaching side again – now that I’m part time, the love of the job as greatly returned.
I’m also posting some more gaming videos to YouTube. Mainly so I can blog about them here, but the videos have been getting a few views, so we’ll see where that goes. I’ve always had a mind to do some chilled live streaming, but that’s a ways off.
The one thing that will be shelved, for now, is Dungeon23. I had such a good run, even managed to catch up into October despite now blogging about it, but I will need to be a lot more free before I can finally finish that project.
Thank you to everyone who has continued to visit this blog in my absence. Hopefully this is me back for good. Writing is not my biggest skill or my greatest hobby, but it is certainly cathartic. It’s good to be back.
For the first time, I started to feel time being pinched to the point where a daily doodle and description had to be put aside. It’s exam season, and I have signed myself to a shedload of marking. Whilst this will prove rewarding in the long term, the next few weeks will be a grind.
Nevertheless, I stole back a couple of hours today and caught up with where I should be. The pause helped in a way, I was able to give this layer a bit more thought. I knew what I wanted to do, but I was concerned about making it too similar. I think I’ve cracked it now.
There’s a lot of people in my megadungeon. They’ve all been different varieties of weird and dangerous, but they’ve all been something to be negotiated with. In future layers, as we delve deeper, the situation is going to get weirder and the NPCs are going to get less rational.
This layer is the tipping point. The self-righteous Ultores will assume new arrivals to be guilty of something. Anything. They’ll be desperate to get hold of the party and put them on “trial”. Go along with the charade, and the adventurers can get away without incident. It is ten times more likely that they will come to blows with the arrogant, incontestable Ultores.
20 weeks! The time is flowing by, and somehow I’m keeping up with the Dungeon23 expectation. Some rooms are drawn very late in the evening, but so far I’ve managed to keep up the momentum.
This layer continues to be a develop into a work space for an international counter-terrorism group. This week we’re building the crucial living and workspaces for the ‘Magnus Ultores’, many of which are still around with nothing better to do than give the adventurers a hard time.
Sometimes it is okay for a room to be empty. I keep having to remind myself of this fact. In any good dungeon crawl, an empty room is highly likely. That empty space might add some flavour to the complex, offer a safe space or contain a hidden treasure… but it really doesn’t need to. In any structure, there’s a room that doesn’t get used that often.
When I first started on the MegaDungeon, I was fully aware that on busy days I could simply write “empty room” and move on. I’ve been finding this hard to do, however. I feel a compulsion to include at least something in every space.
This week’s rooms (and this layer) are significantly less populated than those previously mentioned. There’s still a little something in every space, but in this case the lack of presence here tells a grim story.
Gamer Peak 